principle of illusion, as an object to be attained by the dramatist, was never at all recognised by the Greeks themselves. It is true that the Apollo or the Venus might be rendered by a coating of rose-pink much more like a man and a woman; but the object of the sculptor was to elevate and gratify our imagination, and not to cheat our eye. Had the latter been the aim of sculpture, a wax doll would be a finer production than the noblest marble that ever breathed under the chisel of Phidias.

We have only to read a Greek play to see that nothing can be less artificial as a contrivance for producing mere illusion. The formality and regularity of the language, the simple and straightforward character of the dialogue, the lyric portion or chorus, written in a different dialect and more splendid imagery than the rest of the work, the total neglect of probability and even possibility in the arrangement of the events, time and space perpetually annihilated, and every conceivable rule of human conduct and prudence incessantly violated-all these things sufficiently prove to us that the great Greek dramatists never so much as contemplated the possibility of producing what we call illusion.

No man, we flatter ourselves, ever admired more fervently than we do the admirable genius and exquisite taste which characterise the Greek tragedies: their dignity, their pathos, the wonderful depth and acuteness of the remarks with which they are crowded, the dazzling splendour of the lyric portions so nobly contrasted with the pure marble-like severity of the dialogue, the rich descriptions (put into the mouth of the messenger in most of them) of the terrible catastrophe with which they conclude, and which the Greeks did not permit to take place on the stage, from a scruple founded, we are persuaded, not on a principle of taste, but of religion-these are merits which we can allow with enthusiastic readiness; but they are merits very distinct from that principle of illusion which has been considered as having guided the mighty art of Eschylus, of Sophocles, and of Euripides.

If we examine into the early history of that Romantic Drama which has become universal over the whole of modern Europe, and which has in our own century finally expelled

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the so-called Classicism from its last entrenchments on the stage of France, we shall see how singularly its origin and first development resembled the rise of the Grecian Tragedy. Both species of composition were at first purely religious ; both were performed on solemn occasions in temples; both were distinguished for the simplicity of their structure, and for a total neglect of the much-vaunted principle of illusion; both were accompanied by a certain proportion of lyric declamation, executed by a number of persons who occupied a middle or intermediate position between the principal dramatic characters on the stage (the protagonists) and the audience who witnessed the solemn show.

The food, the pabulum, of the dramatic art was in the two cases as different as were the religion, the manners, the modes of thought and action at the two periods which we have thus contrasted. The Greek dramatist drew his materials from the rich storehouse of pagan mythology, the black annals of his ancient kings, and the legends of his national heroes: in these he found ample materials for his scenes; and the whole was bound together by one pervading principle, in the highest degree moving and sublime-the over-ruling and incessant action of the dramatic fate. These grand and awful events were familiar to the audience from their infancy; they were calculated to gratify to the highest degree the national vanity and patriotic enthusiasm: every Athenian felt himself the countryman, many the descendants, of Theseus or of Edipus ; and when we reflect upon the intensity of the patriotism which characterised the citizens of the little republics of Greece, together with the delicate sense of the beautiful which seemed peculiarly innate in the Hellenic character, we shall find that their dramatists were as amply provided with materials for their art as with rewards for its triumphant exercise.

In the Middle Ages the external manifestations of the art were all changed, but the art itself remained the same. The rude populations of chivalric Europe, the serfs of England, France, and Germany, could have felt but very imperfectly any sentiments addressed to their patriotism. Ignorant, barbarous, and oppressed, how could men love their country, who could not call their wives and children their own? How

could men, reduced to a mere brutish state of animal obedience, feel their hearts swell within them at the mimic representation of great exploits? As to the mere abstract perception of the beautiful, such a feeling could not exist in their minds. What strings were left in the human heart undeadened and capable of responding to the touch of genius? We answer, the sense of wonder. Catholicism, with all its miracles, its legends, its enthusiasm, had supplanted the paganism of classical antiquity. We are not inclined to consider the credulity of the ancients, at least at the period when the Greek drama reached its highest pitch of splendour, as very deeply seated, or likely to modify very profoundly the character of the Athenian people. Their credulity was rather of the imagination; that of the Middle Ages was of the heart. What a difference between the airy grace and sensuous allegory of the pagan mythology, where belief was merely a matter of assent, involving no practical change of conduct, and offering no promises, or very faint ones, of a future existence, with that deep, all-pervading, and solemn religion which offered to the oppressed serf of the Middle Ages his only consolation in this life, together with his mighty hope and onlooking to the next! The very superstitions, too, of the time, the huge mass of striking and yet fantastic imagery which composed a world of legend, exhibit an example of the fact that in depriving the human mind of some of its senses (as takes place in those of the body) we only add intensity and power to those we leave behind.

The religious dramas of the Middle Ages were nothing but an embodiment of Christianity as it appeared to Mysteries. the simple imagination of those rude times. They were often little else but the narration of some biblical or legendary miracle, rudely dramatised, and often in the language of Scripture. They are supposed to have originated in the recitals of pilgrims, returning from their long wanderings in distant and unknown lands with an abundant stock of wonders, perilous adventures and hair-breadth scapes, gorgeous descriptions of the magnificence of the East, enthralling tales of persecution and wild idolatries. With these the "palmer graye" would collect a crowd about him, and keep

his simple hearers listening with unwearied wonder hour after hour; just as the professed tale-teller of the East enchants his grave and bearded audience in the coffee-houses of Damascus, or the ragged improvvisatore of Naples enchains his circle of boatmen and lazzaroni. That such tales should have by degrees taken a dramatic form is not surprising; still less so that the Church should have very soon perceived the efficacy of such representations, not only as instruments of instruction for the people, but also as a means for extending the authority of the priesthood, and increasing the revenues of the ecclesiastical institutions. The people were unable to read, and their ideas respecting the Scriptural history were exceedingly imperfect; and the priests of the Middle Ages were far too well acquainted with the human heart not to know the truth of the Horatian precept―

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Segniùs irritant animum demissa per aures,
Quàm quæ sunt oculis submissa fidelibus."

The Church therefore encouraged, as far as possible, the strong taste early developed for the religious dramas, viewing them as at once a powerful medium of religious instruction, and as an inexhaustible source of profit and influence; and we find them used as a very important mechanism for raising the immense sums destined to the support of the crusades. At first they were of a purely religious character; the subjects were always either events of the biblical history itself, or else extracts from the legends of the saints. The representation of these dramas was very early taken, by the profound policy of the hierarchy, out of the hands of the laity; and the performance was carried on in the church itself, the actors being priests, and the splendour of the spectacle augmented by the use of the rich vestments and ornaments of the clergy.

Here we may clearly see the singular resemblance existing between the Greek tragedy and the religious plays of the Middle Ages. Both were performed in a sacred spot; the subjects of both were drawn from what was considered, at the respective periods, to be most holy and venerable; both were placed before the spectator with the greatest magnificence attainable; and the spirit of mingled patriotism and religion, which it was the object of the Greek theatre to excite, was

certainly little inferior in intensity to the credulous and simple awe with which the rude audiences of Catholic times must have witnessed the great mysteries of their religion represented before the altar of a cathedral. In fact, we cannot but remark that the very name of this species of spectacle is strongly corroborative of the truth of our parallel; they were called " mysteries' and "miracles." Even the division of the stage recalls something of the rigour and complexity of the Greek scene: it was divided into three platforms; the upper being reserved for the appearance of God, angels, and glorified spirits; the next below it, to the human personages of the drama; and the lowest, devoted to the devils, being a representation of the yawning mouth of hell-the "alta ostia Ditis". -a black and gloomy cavern, vomiting flames and sulphureous smoke, through which incessantly ascended the howling of the damned, and by which the evil spirits made their exits and their entrances, rising to tempt and torture humanity, or plunging back with the bodies of their victims. In all these peculiarities it is impossible not to be struck with the resemblance between the drama of the Middle Ages and that of classical antiquity. Nor can we fail to remark the innumerable traces left by the religious dramas upon the art of this period. The much-agitated question of the meaning of the singular title given by Dante to his great work could hardly have been raised had the critics remembered that the commedia of the "gran padre Alighier" is nothing else but a mystery in a narrative form; and that the three divisions of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise correspond exactly with the three stages of the religious dramas.

The subjects of these dramas were generally taken from the most striking and pathetic passages of the Bible history: the Creation, the Deluge, the Fall of Man, the Sacrifice of Abraham, the Massacre of the Innocents, the Crucifixion; no subject appears to have been too solemn or too vast for the attempt of this bold but barbarous art. They never shrank from introducing upon the stage the most sublime personages; the Deity himself, the Saviour, the patriarchs, all figure in these singular dramas. They seem not to have felt that species of awe which would now prevent an author from presenting,